Diablo fans are not happy. Over the weekend, during BlizzCon, Blizzard announced a brand new Diablo game, but it wasn’t the one fans were expecting or were hoping for.
Diablo Immortal is a mobile Diablo game, developed together with Chinese company NetEase, known for their work on several other mobile games like Identity V. Since then, the Diablo community has been in an uproar; you need only take a glance at the game’s subreddit to see that fans aren’t happy about the game’s announcement, claiming that this could be the death of the popular franchise because Blizzard seems to be out of touch with its community.
Since then, Blizzard has processed the fan reaction and backlash, and have responded to it via an interview with Kotaku.
According to the interview, Blizzard co-founder Allen Adham admits that the company did expect some backlash from the Diablo Immortal announcement, but certainly “not to this degree.” In response to the worries that Immortal was simply a reskin of other NetEase games, Adham stated that this is a game “purpose-built from the ground up,” and all the art and assets were created solely for Diablo Immortal.
In addition to that, Adham also made sure to reassure fans that even though the company didn’t announce the much anticipated and expected Diablo IV, Blizzard does have multiple teams working on multiple Diablo projects, which suggests that the next mainline Diablo game is likely still in development.
Diablo Immortal is set to be released for mobile devices, though there’s no release date for the game just yet.
